Roller: the Effect of the Environment to the Emergence of Behavior

In this paper, we study the effect of an open environment to the behavior of an autonomous mobile agent. The focus of our study is in the emergent behavior. For this purpose, we use a particle system. With it, we can capture and simulate both the agent and its environment uniformly, to reveal the emergent properties. We illustrate the use of a particle system in analyzing the emergent behavior of a simple moving agent, Roller, in order to improve its performance in an undetermined terrain.